Halo Legends is a collection of seven animated short films set in the Halo science-fiction universe. Financed by Halo franchise overseer 343 Industries, the stories were created by five Japanese production houses: Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4°C, and Toei Animation. Shinji Aramaki, creator and director of Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina, serves as the project’s creative director. The idea for an anime compilation existed for years before there was momentum for the project. 343 Creative director Frank O’Connor produced story outlines or finished scripts that the production houses animated in a variety of styles
Now ordinarily I would be pretty skeptical about something like this due in part to the failures of other game titles that tried to make the jump from gaming platform to animated media format. Especially when Western and Eastern animation studios come together, Deadspace being a prime example of such a failure but on the flip side you get great success stories like The Animatrix and Batman Gotham Knight. Good examples of what can be done when Western and Eastern companies come together. So here is my review of Halo: Legends that includes a image, plot synopsis, mini review and rating out of 5.

“The Babysitter”

“Babysitters” follows a squad of four Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or Helljumpers. The squad is composed of Private O’Brien, Dutch (from Halo 3: ODST), Master Sergeant Cortez, and Corporal Checkman. O’Brien is being replaced as the squad’s sniper by Cal-141, a SPARTAN-II, and is now the backup. The squad is sent into a Covenant zone under the cover of a meteor shower to eliminate a Prophet. Produced by Eiko Tanaka and directed by Toshiyuki Kanno.
“The Babysitters” starts off boring, but slowly picks up the pace as the story develops. The story only start push the right buttons mid way through and they even managed some character development in the short time span.The art and design also move from rather mediocre to simply amazing, and you can see that Studio 4C tried out different animation techniques. There is also a rather interesting twist to the story at the end.

  • Score: 4/5

“The Dual”

Produced by Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and directed by Hiroshi Yamazaki, with creative supervision by Mamoru Oshii follows an Arbiter named Fal who does not want to follow the Covenant religion. One of the Prophets accuses Fal of heresy. Fal will not yield and the Prophet is forced to send another Elite to kill Fal.
“The Dual” was entirely created in CG, but they put a different spin on the overall feel and design by putting some kind of filter over it giving it the look and feel of a moving oil painting. It is a rather weird art style to say the least, but after a short while you get used to it. The overall story and action sequences were brilliantly, and the most interesting part about this story is how they put a Samurai styled spin on “The Dual” definitely also one of my favorites.

  • Score: 5/5

“The package”

On board a cloaked human ship, a group of elite super soldiers called Spartans (John-117/Master Chief, Frederic-104, Kelly-087, Arthur-079 and Solomon-069) are briefed by an intelligence officer about their mission. A Covenant fleet is momentarily trapped in the system, and is carrying an important “package” the Spartans must retrieve. The ship decloaks and deploys the Spartans in small ships called Booster Frames. Solomon detects the package on one of the ships.
Entirely rendered in CG or to be more precise cell shaded. From a technical aspect it really does look great and is the best looking episode of the bunch, the episode even pays homage to the Halo franchise by showing off some of the weaponry that the Spartans uses and even includes a couple of shots of your heroes in action while in first person mode Halo 3 style.

Score: 4/5

“Origins” 1 & 2

On board the ship Forward Unto Dawn , the artificial intelligence Cortana and Master Chief are stranded after the events of Halo 3. Cortana muses on her existence and what she has learned about the noble and ancient race known as the Forerunners. Cortana narrates past events: thousands of years ago, the Forerunners were a great civilization, but they came under attack by the parasitic Flood. The Forerunner underestimated the Flood, by which time it had spread, gaining the knowledge of the life it consumed. Though the Forerunners fought bravely, but realized it was a futile fight. After trying other methods, they developed a weapon of last resort; an array of ringed megastructures or Halos that would destroy the Flood and their food supply—every sentient creature in the galaxy. While the Flood and Forerunner were wiped out by the Halo Array’s activation, the Forerunners reseeded cataloged life throughout the galaxy.
Both episodes of “Origins” is basically a background story of the world and universe that Halo set in. It is your standard post-apocalyptic story, but really well paced and narrated and fills in the blanks for those who haven’t played any of the Halo games. It has a great soundtrack and really brings back some fond memories of the Halo universe. The animation however is not on the same level as the other episodes.

  • Score: 4/5